


Leviathan

by the_alchemist



Category: Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Genre: Crueltide, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medicine, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:14:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/pseuds/the_alchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Ahab's first encounter with Moby Dick, as told by an eyewitness who finds Ishmael's version of events severely lacking. More than an eyewitness, in fact, since our narrator is serving as the Pequod's surgeon at the time. Unfortunately, however, he is about as experienced at surgery as Ishmael is at whaling ...</p><p>A note on the tags - this is definitely gen, but it's rather slashy gen. And while there are no graphic depictions of violence, there is a very graphic depiction of (pre-anaesthetic) surgery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlterEgon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/gifts).



“All that we can do is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio; that each, at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation, or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction.” _On the Origin of Species_ , Charles Darwin

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.” _Hamlet_ , William Shakespeare

 

Call me Isaac. It’s my name, as it happens: Isaac William Wardhaugh, and by that name I swear that every word I write here shall be God’s honest truth. Unlike certain other writers (I will not use the word ‘author’, for the individual to whom I refer is entirely lacking in anything resembling authority), I write only of that which I have witnessed with my own eyes and ears.

When I was a young man, I went to sea, and there I saw much that was remarkable. But this is not my story. Rather, it is the story of the greatest man I ever met. He deserves a better biographer than I, but – alas – he had a worse one, and so it is for me to do my best to set things right.

My parents were Londoners of the middling sort, and I attended good schools until my father died when I was thirteen, leaving my mother and myself without the means to continue my formal education. I was then apprenticed to an apothecary, and served four years under him, gaining my License a little after my seventeenth birthday.

As a schoolboy, I liked nothing more than to grub about in gardens, parks and woodland, searching for beetles to identify, classify and collect; or sketching birds and animals. Though during my apprenticeship I had little time for such pursuits, my ardour for them was not dampened, and indeed it was perhaps the same desire to understand the workings of living things that led me to my chosen trade.

Tempting as it was to set up shop in London, I was therefore determined that while I was still young I should see more of the world, and in particular of the variety of animal life therein. And it seemed to me that the easiest and best way of doing that was to sign up as a surgeon on a whaling ship (my apothecary’s License qualifying me in theory, if not in practice, for this responsibility).

So on the day I qualified, I shouldered my way through shoals of fishermen carrying their dripping bundles towards Billingsgate, and went to Custom House, where I presented my License to the Mustering Officer and – to my delight – was immediately accepted onto the _Syren_. Had I been older and wiser, the Mustering Officer’s eagerness for me to sign the articles might have been a warning sign, but as it was, I simply assumed that he considered me a superior sort of person.

The sad truth of the matter is that no-one who knew the slightest thing about the English whaling trade would have agreed to serve on the _Syren_ , since Captain Jones was a tyrant, his mates lecherous drunkards, and the men desperate souls who chose the ship because it was marginally less unpleasant than the streets or the gaols. Although kind to no-one, Captain Jones seemed to have a particular grudge against me – or against sea surgeons in general. He was legally obliged to carry one, and never once let me forget that I was only there because of this inconvenient law. He banished me to eat with the harpooners (‘and that’s more than you deserve’) and my lay (or share of the profits) was less than that of the carpenter.

The men were a hardy crew, distrustful of the art and science of medicine, and so I had little chance to practice. Though they often got into fights, they generally preferred to bleed than let me stitch them (which may have been fair, since I had never before stitched anyone, though I had read much about the theory). The only visits I received were from two men who were very far gone with the pox, for whom I could do little, since Captain Jones was too mean to keep the medicine chest well stocked, and the calomel was all gone; and from those who sought to beguile me into parting with a dose or two of opium.

But the lack of medical work did not mean I sat idle. Instead, Captain Jones expected me to fulfil the role of an ordinary seaman – or rather, to be an overgrown cabin boy, for I was not trusted to take part in the chase itself, but was instead given double watches, and tasked with cleaning, scrubbing and other such menial work.

Six months into the voyage, a little before my eighteenth birthday, I was approaching something very like despair. Even when another whaler was sighted, and the news spread that we were to meet them in a gam, it did not lift my black mood.

The name of the ship we were to meet was _Pequod_ , and her captain, one Captain Ahab. I believe – and fear – that these names may be not unfamiliar to some who read this. But please, I ask you to put aside your preconceptions from any previous account you may have read, particularly pertaining to events that the writer of said account was not and could not possibly have been witness to.

Captain Ahab came over to the _Syren_ , with one of his mates and half his crew, bringing with him a letter for Captain Jones. He was a most striking man – no longer young, but hale and strong with hair still dark save for a white patch where began a scar that ran from his head down the side of his face and neck, and into his shirt. His sharply formed features might on another man be described as ‘exaggerated’, but they suited him well.

On that one occasion I was granted the favour of dining in the mess with both Captains and their mates – I suppose Captain Jones did not want to seem mean-spirited in front of a well-respected peer.

After exchanging a few pleasantries with my superiors, Captain Ahab turned his bright blue eyes on me, commented upon my youth, and asked for some particulars of my life. While I was stuttering out my history (the intensity of his gaze disconcerting and flattering enough half to lose me for words), Captain Jones was reading his letter.

After a minute, I began to perceive that something was amiss, as did Captain Ahab, for his eyes kept darting to the side. Captain Jones’s face had gone red, and his fists were clenched. Then he stood up, dragged me up by my shirt collar, and punched me squarely in the mouth. When I fell, half dazed, he began to kick me, and got two or three kicks in before I saw Captain Ahab and our second mate pulling him away, at which point I fainted.


	2. Chapter 2

I woke up, my head a hot ball of pain. I was in a bed, and though my eyes were half swollen shut, I could immediately perceive it was not my own. In fact, the cabin where I lay was perhaps six or seven times the size of mine: a palace compared to anything I had yet seen at sea. There was someone else in the room. I tried to ask where I was, but my mouth too was swollen and some of my teeth were gone.

‘Do not try to talk.’ The voice was deep, with a cracked, sonorous authority that was already familiar to me. Captain Ahab. He came over and sat beside the bed.

‘Captain Jones hath dismissed thee from his service,’ he said. At that I tried to sit up, but Captain Ahab took my shoulder in his big hand, and gently pushed me back down again. ‘Do not move either,’ he said.

‘It seems,’ he continued, ‘that the good Captain’s wife has written to inform him that she and the town physician have set up house together in Boston, and that he needs not expect her back. He has determined therefore, to dismiss thee for misconduct, on the grounds that all medical men are sure to be misconducting themselves in one way or another.

‘Now, this is plainly madness, and either he will come to his senses or the first mate will be bound to take his place. Either way, I suppose you will be wanted back. But–’ And here he smiled, just a little. ‘But if thou wilt ship with me, I will give thee the 160th lay, out of my own.’

That was more generous than the 170th I was getting on the _Syren_! But in truth I would have gone with him no matter what the lay, and not only because of my miserable situation under Captain Jones but also because there was something that drew me to him, fascinated me, and yes … even so soon inspired devotion, though he never once solicited it.

‘Nod thy head,’ he said, ‘if thou wilt say me aye.’

I raised my head to nod vigorously, but this brought down fresh waves of agony, so I lowered it slowly. That sufficed. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘And I thank thee. Now, rest.’

 

So it was that I started my voyage on the _Pequod_ not as surgeon, but as patient. Captain Ahab had given me his own bed while he slept in a hammock, and would not hear of me moving. He applied cold compresses to my bruised and swollen face, and even gave me a few stitches where I had gashed my cheek in falling.

America, he explained, is not so civilised as England, and so the owners of whaling ships are not obliged to provide a surgeon, with the consequence that every captain must know what was needful to care for the medical needs of his crew. ‘I have been a captain some thirty years,’ he added, ‘and there is not much I have not seen during that time.’

I opened my mouth to ask him why then he had taken me, but then I shut it, for fear the answer was ‘pity’.

 

Being young, my convalescence was not long. Soon I was up and about again. Captain Ahab said that since there was not a cabin spare for me and it would not be proper for me to bunk with the men, I might as well stay in his cabin, and that furthermore he preferred the hammock, so I should keep the bed. I ate with him and the mates, and was accorded every respect due to my profession, my inexperience being graciously overlooked

I looked forward to the Captain’s talkative moods, for he too was a naturalist, and knew more about living things than anyone I had met. The first time a whale was brought in, he leant on the taffrail with me, watching the mates dig in and roll off the blubber in a big blanket piece, pointing out this and that: ‘see that part of his skull – that’s where we get the spermaceti from which he takes his name; see how they drive a rod into his guts? They’re looking for ambergris, a sign of decrepitude in a whale, but of great value for man.

After several weeks, we made a brief sojourn on the Galapagos Islands, to replenish our supplies of fresh food, especially the giant tortoises that abounded there. But while the mates and men hunted, Captain Ahab told me there was something he wished me to see. He took me to a rocky place by the shore, and motioned me to lie down on my front beside him, and observe.

At first I couldn’t see anything, but then I noticed a movement, and I saw something like a large lizard plod in from the sea, frisking its tail as it went. It wandered in our direction, with a funny, lop-sided gait, and then the strangest thing happened: it sneezed and a large jet of water protruded from its nose, and then it stood still. Then I noticed the others. There were dozens of them: some basking, some waddling, some diving into the clear waters and darting about with all the grace they lacked on land. It was as though I were a schoolboy again, but watching stranger and bigger beasts than our English beetles.

‘Iguanas sneeze to rid themselves of the saltwater,’ Captain Ahab whispered.

‘Like a whale spouting,’ I said.

Captain Ahab frowned, then smiled. It was a rare sight, his smile, and all the more precious for that. He smiled on the left hand side of his face only, the right hand side perhaps being impaired by his scar, or just by some quirk of nature. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I suppose it is so.’

It turned out that our stealth had been quite unnecessary, for when we grew tired of lying and sat side by side on the rocks, only the few iguanas closest to us waddled off in alarm. The ones a few yards away paid us no heed.

‘The last time I anchored here,’ he said, filling his pipe. ‘I met the most remarkable man, a countryman of yours.’

‘Oh?’ I said.

‘Aye.’ He lit his pipe and spent a good long time savouring the first few puffs. ‘Aye,’ he repeated. ‘A Mr Charles Darwin.’

Now, of course, all the world has heard of Mr Darwin, but it was not so then. ‘Why was he so remarkable?’ I asked.

Captain Ahab pondered, enjoying his pipe. ‘He is one of those people who can see things that are perfectly plain when you think about them, but which no-one ever _has_ thought about before.’

‘Things?’

‘About finches,’ said Captain Ahab. ‘And yet about more than finches.’

‘ _Finches_?’ I said. ‘The bird?’

‘Aye,’ said Captain Ahab. ‘And yet about more than the bird.’

We fell silent, watching two iguanas frisking about together in the shallows.

‘Perhaps,’ said Captain Ahab, ‘the distant ancestors of these iguanas lived only in the sea. And perhaps one had … a disfigurement, let’s say: fins that were a little bit like legs. But rather than making him a cripple, this disfigurement advantaged the little iguana, for he could hunt both in and out of the water, and could more readily escape danger.’ He paused.

‘Is this a fable?’ I asked.

‘Certainly not,’ said Ahab. And he spent a minute or so silently smoking. But then he continued. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that the disfigured iguana would be more likely to live on and breed. And just as fathers pass to their sons their features and hue, and even disease and deformity, mayhap the sons and daughters of this iguana would also have the strange, leg-like fins. And they too would be more likely than their cousins to live on and breed. And so it might be that over decades or centuries, the old kind died out, and all iguanas were amphibious, which is to say could abide happily on either sea or land.’

I had been trying hard to follow. ‘It … could be,’ I said. ‘But what of it?’

Captain Ahab put down his pipe, stared into my eyes and seized my arm for a second, then seemed to relent. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘What of it?’


	3. Chapter 3

Shortly after that, an outbreak of dysentery laid up half of our crew. Our first mate, Mr Colgan, spied a solitary bull whale, and Captain Ahab, loathe to let any opportunity slip by, asked whether I might be willing to join the lowering so that we could put out two boats fully manned.

I readily agreed, for the fear and pity I at first felt when watching the chase had been transmuted into something a little like envy. I was in the Captain’s own boat, and I saw my solemn yet kind companion transformed into a he-fury of the waves. He stood at the stern of the boat, planted firm as an oak, leading with his hooked nose as though he might smell our quarry. ‘Pull, you lazy vermin,’ he cried. ‘Pull, damned villains.’ I had thought I was pulling with all my might, but somehow his words sought out and found in me new reserves of power. I gritted my teeth and silenced the screaming of my muscles, and pulled, and pulled.

Up close, the whale was bigger than I’d imagined any living thing could possibly be: grace, terror and sublimity united in a wall of warm, breathing flesh. I felt the movement of air as the harpoon flew towards it, the line hurtling out of the tub inches from my arm, as fast and deadly as a mamba.

Captain Ahab shouted in exhilaration as we were dragged along: a wild, savage sound, barely human. I held on tight to my bench, staring straight ahead.

The kill was the Captain’s. It was then that I began to feel pity for the beast, as he spurted red, soaking us all in his lifeblood. What must it be, I wondered, to inhabit a body so big as that – and a brain too – to feel yourself monarch of the ocean until that sting in your flesh, the fatal instinct to get away, the gradual onset of exhaustion, and then the killing blows and slow extinguishing of your being and might?

 

Captain Ahab understood the dangers of scurvy, and the salutary effect of walking about on shore. So it was that not many months after we had stopped on Galapagos, we stopped again on Hawaii. Captain Ahab asked me to accompany both him and Kapula, a harpooner native to those isles, to trade with the local Chieftain for sheep, fruit and vegetables.

During the negotiations, which were long, and accompanied by much eating and drinking, Captain Ahab sat cross-legged like a native himself, and even spoke some words in their tongue.

That night, though all three of the mates and many of the others lay down beside one of the island girls, the Captain returned to his cabin on the _Pequod_ , and I with him. He poured us each a glass of wine – a rare treat. A little in my cups – for my regular habits were abstemious – I asked him why he had not chosen one of the girls who had paid court to him. Suddenly he frowned, becoming serious and vehement. ‘I have a young wife,’ he said, ‘and I would not be unfaithful to her for all the world.’ I felt a profound longing then for someone who would give me the kind of love I heard in his voice.

 

Now and again, Captain Ahab was taken by a fit of melancholy. It often came to him after we were done trying out. He would stand at the prow for hours on end – days sometimes – smoking his pipe or simply staring out into the ocean.

Mr Colgan and the other mates had all warned me never to approach when this mood was upon him, but once, a little after Hawaii, some spirit compelled me to ignore their advice. As I stepped forward, he turned, with thunder in his brows, and I stepped back, but then his hard face softened just a little, and he beckoned me to him. ‘Stand with me,’ he said. I opened my mouth to ask what was the matter, what could I do, but he silenced me. ‘Just stand with me.’

At first it felt awkward, but after a few minutes staring out to sea with him, a profound and sorrowful calm settled over my soul. The backs of our hands were touching, and we breathed in and out as one. ‘What a piece of work is man,’ he muttered.

‘Hmm?’

‘Shakespeare.’ Still he looked out to sea. ‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.’

Suddenly he turned to me. ‘Do you know Shakespeare?’ he said. I shook my head. ‘A pity. I thought an Englishman ...’ But then he looked out to sea again and spoke no more.


	4. Chapter 4

The next time the boats were lowered was the last. From the moment the cry came up: ‘Thar she blows!’ I knew something was different. There was awe in the voice of the man who proclaimed it as well as the usual excitement. Soon the name was flying from man to man in hushed tones: Moby Dick. Even I had heard the legends of the great white whale. Even the men of the _Syren_ spoke it with respect.

And he was – he is – a magnificent, awful spectacle. Quite apart from his bulk and his deformed lower jaw, there was something intrinsically alarming about his mottled, white flesh. The huge, irregular spots and blotches awakened in me a primaeval sense of revulsion. As the others scrambled to launch the boats, a deep dread rose within me.

Though I dared not look away, it was difficult for me to see what was happening, though I could see from the first that something was terrible and wrong. Among the churning water I here and there caught glimpse of a boat, a man, an oar; or of his flukes, thrashing up and down like an impatient cook violently stirring a cauldron. I thought for sure I saw two or three men drown, and all the boats beyond repair, and began to fear they would all die, and myself, the carpenter and the blacksmith would be left alone floating in the vast ocean.

Then someone was calling my name, and I saw that one of the boats, at least, had managed to make it to the side of the ship, shattered as it was, and filling with water. I ran to the taffrail, reached down, and the man who was pushed into my arms was my Captain. It felt like insolence, if not desecration, to hold him as I did and haul him over onto the deck. I feared to be punished for my presumption. Yet all those petty, selfish fears melted away when I saw what had happened, saw the mess of flesh and cloth and bone that truncated his right leg.

I cried out in anguish, which made the other sailors, now joining us on deck, flinch back. I looked around. Help. He needed help. He needed ... Help. He needed me. All at once I understood that it was a terrible mistake – I, who had been so proud of gaining my License at seventeen, was a child still, not qualified for anything, least of all this.

Everyone was looking at me, everyone apart from Captain Ahab, whose eyes were closed, though he was conscious, I think, his chest rising and falling in short, shallow breaths. His blood was pooling onto the deck, dark and sort of iridescent. Well, that at least I could stop. I took the kerchief from around my neck and used it as a makeshift tourniquet.

‘It’s all right,’ I said, despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary. I laid my hand on his shoulder.

The Captain’s eyes fluttered open. ‘It’s … raining,’ he said. Which was true. Also, though it was perhaps the least of his woes, it was also the easiest to remedy.

I remembered his own stories about operations performed on the mess table, and told some people to bring the medicine chest there, and Kapula, who was the strongest man on board, to carefully lift up the Captain and take him to the same place.

 

Once he was lying on the mess table I shut the door on the others and then stopped to think. I’d just come to the conclusion that perhaps I could open the medicine chest, when he spoke to me, almost in a whisper. ‘Will you please ... just ... do ... _something_ ,’ he said.

I opened the medicine chest and picked up _The Surgeon’s Mate_ , turning to the index and looking – ridiculously, I now see – for something like ‘Leg, eaten by a whale, what to do if’.

Suddenly his arm shot out and grabbed mine, pulling me down closer to him, with a strength I would not have thought possible. ‘Reading,’ he hissed, ‘is not doing. You have disobeyed me, sir, and will be thrashed for it, aye, a dozen lashes, and another dozen for every minute you delay further.’

I was not afraid of the lash, but I was ashamed at having deserved it, so at once I steeled myself to look at the wound. The pictures in the books hadn’t looked so messy and ragged. Besides which, I had only seen instructions on how to amputate a leg myself, not on what to do had that task already been accomplished on my behalf. I saw what looked like a loose piece of bone, and tugged at it. It came away with a little resistance, and it must have hurt him, because he flinched and gasped. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

But once I’d started, it was easier to go on. Gingerly, I took a fold of cloth between my finger and thumb and peeled it back a little, then remembered there were scissors in the medicine chest, and used them to cut away what remained of the trouser leg.

A tendon was protruding some several inches from the wound, so I took the curved dismembering knife to it, but it was harder than I expected. I bore down, but that was the wrong thing to do, for the poor suffering Captain, whom I had assumed to be unconscious, jerked forward and upward in a violent paroxysm, catching me on the chin with the knee of his intact left leg.

Once I’d recovered sufficiently to speak, I apologised, and said I would fetch someone to hold him down, but he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They mustn’t see ... mustn’t ... there’s rope. There’s rope in the chest. Just tie me down.’

I supposed that real sailors have a specific knot for tying their captain to a table, but I made do with a reef knot, which was the only kind I knew. Because of shame, or guilt, or some such thing, I hadn’t much been looking at his face, but I saw now how pale it was, and for the first time it occurred to me that he could die. His heavy brows lowered into a frown – perhaps he saw the pity and fear in my face – and so I set to work again.

Sometimes when I’m sketching I fall into a state where the rest of my consciousness recedes and all that remains is the paper and pencil; the object and image. Something like that happened then. I managed to dissociate myself from the fear and horror, and see before me a job to be done, a rip to be sewn – and – though it makes me ashamed to speak in such terms – a piece of meat to be dressed.

What a piece of work is man.


	5. Chapter 5

Of course, I directed that the Captain should be put back onto his own bed after that – I would take the hammock. He was still awake – indeed, I am fairly certain that he stayed awake throughout the whole thing, so I gave him laudanum. He was so weak that I had to lift him up and raise the cup to his mouth. He closed his eyes and drank, the moved his head forward so that it touched my chest, and made a little sound of pain or despair.

I drew him in and enfolded him for a moment in my arms, then gently laid him down. Tears came to my eyes. It was not only human sympathy I felt, but a deep sense of the natural order having been reversed. He who should have been all powerful was under my power. I laid the blanket over him, but he could not tolerate even that soft, light load upon his leg, and so I carefully tucked it around.

And the strangest thing is that he smiled his once-in-a-blue-moon smile then. ‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Sit with me until I’m asleep.’

I watched by his bedside, unable to tell if he was asleep or awake, and afraid lest death should take him while my back were turned.

After some hours, Mr Colgan knocked on the cabin door and inquired (of me!) whether he should take command of the ship. I was wondering how to respond, but the Captain had heard and said, loudly: ‘you are too ambitious, Mr Colgan. Keep her on the course I have set, and if anything untoward should happen, come to me directly.’

(This represented, I suspect, a rare but understandable lapse of judgment Mr Colgan was not in the least ambitious so far as I can see: he was no younger than Captain Ahab, and a fine, conscientious first mate, with neither the aptitude, nor, so far as I could see, the desire to rise further in his profession. In any case, he seemed a little relieved as he nodded and withdrew.)

The exertion of speaking seemed to hurt Captain Ahab. He bent his head back and groaned. ‘A Captain’s lot is a hard one, sir. No rest, no respite can be his, but he must always seem strong, be strong, or else the life of his men will be – as Mr Hobbes had it – solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.’

I had heard those words somewhere before, and wanted to enquire where they were from, but did not want to tire him so simply said: ‘And I am sorry for it, my Captain.’

I started to rearrange the blankets, but he shooed me off. ‘You fuss like an old woman, sir. I would be alone. Go and be of assistance to Mr Colgan, and see to it that he does not overreach his authority.’

 

Over the next few days I spent the nights in the Captain’s hammock, and visited him several times a day to bring food – he would not suffer the steward in his presence – and fulfil my duties as the ship’s surgeon. But otherwise I was banished to some other part of the ship. I reread all my books on surgery, with renewed attention and vigour, for I could now better imagine applying what I read.

At least a dozen of the men asked after the Captain: would he recover? Would he be able to sail again? I took care to give answers which were hopeful without being definite. It was then I began to understand how well respected – even loved – he was, for his profitable skills and instincts, but also for his sense of fairness.

About a week after Moby Dick had done his dreadful work, as I brought the Captain his breakfast, he told me to stop with him a while. My heart rejoiced, both because I saw this as a sign of recovery, and because I had missed his companionship.

‘I would stand up,’ he said. ‘I grow tired of lying still.’

‘In time,’ I said. ‘The carpenter will make you a wooden leg, and you shall stand as well as any man.’ Or at least, I added to myself, any man with a wooden leg.

He frowned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have determined that I shall have a leg made out of whalebone, but that is beside the point. I would stand today, now.’

‘I don’t think–’ I began.

‘Would you disobey me, sir?’ Then he frowned again, more deeply. ‘You disobeyed me before, did you not? I’d forgotten. Foolish Ahab!’

‘Captain–’ I said.

‘Aye,’ he continued. ‘And I said you would be lashed for it.’ He lowered his gaze. ‘I am sorry for that, I forgot for a moment your youth, and the effect that an act of tragic violence can have even on those who stand by.’

‘It’s all right!’ I said. ‘I mean, I understand. I should have mastered myself. And of course you barely knew what you were saying. I … I didn’t actually think you would have me flogged.’

He gave me an unreadable look. ‘I won’t _have_ you flogged,’ he said. ‘I will flog you myself. I am sorry for it, but I must. A captain must keep his word in these matters.’

‘But no-one heard you say it!’ I said.

‘You heard me,’ he said.

I opened my mouth to protest, but then shut it again. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Do with me what you will.’

‘Now, I would stand up.’

 

My sentence was carried out the next day, and I was not spared the indignity of it being done in public. ‘Thou art my friend, I hope,’ he said, ‘but I will grant thee no special favours.’

I nodded. ‘And I expect none,’ I said. Which wasn’t quite true, but felt like the right thing to say.

‘There’s my Isaac.’

And indeed, as I was tied to the mast, I felt very much like my biblical namesake. But there was no such deliverance for me, since aboard the _Pequod_ , Captain Ahab was both patriarch and God.

It was against my medical advice as well as against my personal inclination that it happened so soon, for though the Captain had succeeded in standing up the previous day, leaning heavily on my shoulder, and had even taken a few steps, using me as a sort of crutch, I was afraid that the exertion of going out on deck would reopen his wound, or worse.

But my advice could only ever be advice, and my duty was obedience.

He solemnly gathered the whole crew around, and explained what my crime had been. I felt my cheeks burning in shame. I was tied so that I couldn’t see them, but I imagined them regarding me with hostility and disdain, even repugnance for my inability to do the work which excused me from their tougher duties.

After that, the physical pain as he lashed me almost came as a relief. I had thought perhaps that in his weakened state Captain Ahab would not be able to hit me hard, or that from his seat on an ivory stool, he wouldn’t have a long enough reach, but it was not so.

The second time he hit me, I had to clench my teeth to prevent myself from crying out. And the third time was when I really felt as though I was in trouble. What if I fainted? What if I lost control of my bowels, as I had heard was not uncommon in these situations? But by the fourth time, I didn’t care about any of those things, and couldn’t think of anything except how much it hurt. After six, he paused, and I wondered whether it was over, but there was another six to come. By the eleventh I thought I could bear it no longer, and yet there was a kind of desperate elation too. I had survived, and it was over.

When I was untied and turned round, the crew weren’t laughing or jeering as I had expected. I met Kapula’s eyes and he smiled and nodded slightly. I held myself up straight, before turning to the Captain.

‘Is it finished?’ I asked, ignoring the waves of pain that were coursing through my body.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It is finished.’ Then I think the same thought occurred to us at the same time. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘It would be unwise of me to lean on you this time.’

But I knew how much he hated the idea of leaning on anyone else – and was proud of it too. I thought I could at least get to the cabin without fainting or sobbing, so by way of reply, I helped him up.

‘Lie down,’ he said, as soon as the cabin door was shut. I lay down on my front on the bed, he sat beside me, opened the medicine chest, dipped a cloth in his mug of water, and laid it over my wounds. It was cool and soothing, and when he laid his hand on top, the slight pressure somehow made it hurt less rather than more.

His gentleness was somehow the thing that broke me, and I gave way to the tears that I had been supressing for … well, perhaps for a week, now I came to think about it. I felt foolish and terrible for it, but it was also a relief.

‘My poor Isaac,’ he said, and stroked my hair. Then he gave me laudanum to drink, enough that I soon fell asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

When I awoke it was in pain and at night. I think I cried out a little, for Captain Ahab, who was in the bed beside me, turned and touched my shoulder. ‘Isaac?’ he said.

‘Aye Captain?’

‘Do you understand why I flogged you?’

‘Aye,’ I said. ‘For that a captain must always keep his word.’

‘But why?’ said the Captain.

I pondered. ‘Because he must be beyond reproach,’ I said.

‘No man is beyond reproach,’ said the Captain. He paused for a moment. ‘When I was not much older than thou,’ he said. ‘I was in a bookshop in Nantucket and I saw a book called _Leviathan_. Thinking it to be about whales, I bought it. In fact it was a book about politics by another countryman of thine, a Mr Hobbes.’

The pain made it difficult to concentrate, but I forced myself. I could tell from his tone of voice that he was saying something important. He had probably been lying awake thinking about it.

‘Dost thou remember the iguanas?’ he asked. ‘Or rather, dost thou remember what I said about them?’

‘What?’ Now, those of you who have read the other book may remember the rumour it spread that Captain Ahab was mad at this time. This was the first and only time when I feared this might be so. Leviathans, and politics and iguanas. It made no sense to me.

‘Dost not remember the story I told, in which only the iguanas best equipped to eat and not be eaten survived? And life for the others – and for all of them, in the end – was nasty, brutish and short?’

I said I remembered something of that kind.

‘This book,’ said the Captain. ‘This book _Leviathan_ , says the same is true for men who lack a strong leader, and I know this to be true. Terrible things happen when a captain is weak or unsure of himself, or goes back on his word.’ He paused. ‘And I feel … nay I know … that somehow, these stories – those of Mr Darwin, and those of Mr Hobbes –that these stories hide the secret, the meaning of … of this thing that happened to me. Of Moby Dick.’

I had only taken in about half of what he had been saying, but I think I got the gist of it right. It had not occurred to me that there was any meaning or secret in what had happened beyond whaling being a dangerous pursuit. But I wasn’t thinking very straight. My back hurt more than ever, and my head hurt too, and I’d been lying on my front for too long, but couldn’t move onto my side, let alone my back without great pain.

‘But I forget myself,’ he said. ‘Thou too art wounded. Here.’ By the dim light of the one lamp he poured out some more laudanum for me.

 

For the next few days we abided together in near isolation, he caring for me and I for him. He spoke much about the ideas that all the world now knows as ‘natural selection’, and eventually I began to understand.

As we supped together on the third night, he in bed, I in a chair by his side, he suddenly put his fork down, and closed his eyes. I reached out and touched his shoulder, thinking him to be afflicted by another sudden wave of pain, but he moved my hand and motioned me to be silent.

After many minutes, he began to speak. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ he said. ‘Mankind is Prometheus, Mankind is Pandora. We have taken what is not ours and are punished for it.’ He stopped, closed his eyes again, and drew breath. ‘And God created great whales,’ he said.

Perhaps to another man this to would have sounded like madness, but now I knew him better, and I waited for him to speak the truth which united these things.

‘And we hunted whales and harvested them. We took the slowest, the weakest, the oldest, the sickest. And the strongest remained to breed among themselves and their offspring were yet stronger, and _their_ offspring stronger yet. Remember the _Essex_?’

I did. It was a name which whalers, English and American alike, spoke with fear. A great bull whale had rammed and sunk her, and three quarters of the crew had died in the most horrible of circumstances: some of thirst, some of hunger; and some – worse yet – chosen by lot to be killed and for their flesh and marrow to serve as food for their starving shipmates. ‘Aye,’ I said.

‘The sperm whale,’ he said, ‘has changed. Once he was a simple, placid, trusting fellow, and we have, as it were, _bred out_ those amiable traits have, as one breeds docility out of guard dogs or ferocity out of lapdogs. And it is for me to set this right.’

Perhaps one of the crew heard him saying something of this sort, and thought it madness, and repeated it in garbled form to the schoolmaster who called himself – yes, I shall name him – who called himself Ishmael, who then embellished the story. But more likely, that is too generous an interpretation.

I saw there were tears in his eyes – something I would have thought impossible – as he repeated these last words: ‘aye, it is for me to set this right.’ I reached out to him, taking his hardened hands in mine, and wishing for greater age, greater wisdom, that I might reach across the metaphysical divides that separated us as easily as the physical.

 

There is not much more to say. I had determined to sail with my Captain again, if he would have me, and do what I could to aid him in his quest. But upon arriving in Nantucket I received the news that my mother was sick, and so I had no choice but to return to London. I never saw him again. It torments me that the only account we have of his last months, his last days and hours, are that of a proven liar. And yet not entirely so, for that means I still have the tiniest hope that his death too is a lie, and that he abides still upon the sea, defending man from nature.


End file.
